res ipsa loquitur

The Daily Telegraph reports on the ancient origins of Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" sketch in a 1,600-year-old bit about a dead slave.

From AP: "Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a gritty, working-class town outside Barcelona, has placed a sea of solar panels atop mausoleums at its cemetery, transforming a place of perpetual rest into one buzzing with renewable energy."

I love it! I've been more partial to cremation, but if my family wants to deposit my corpus in the ground it would be wonderful to have that plot of ground be useful for green power generation.

Heading for Kate's party last night, I was headed west on Edmondson Avenue, about to turn left on Old Frederick Road. A car coming the other way got into the right lane, pulled out into the intersection, stopped, put his left blinker on, and just stood there. WTF? As I tried to go around him, I saw the driver waving at me. Guess he was lost.

I rolled down my window.

"Excuse me," he yelled, "can you tell me how to get to Edmondson Avenue, back in the the city?" (For those who don't know, I'm a short way out into the suburbs of Baltimore, just a few miles from the city line.)

"Well, this is Edmondson."

"You're kidding!"

"Nope. Just keep going the way you're going and it'll take you into the city."

"Thanks!" And we each went on our way.

This is certainly a metaphor for something, isn't it?

A Lego version of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks at the Diner. Stonehenge with cigarette packs. Take a gander, and marvel.

From Lore Sjöberg's blog over at Wired, a look a what real-life dungeon exploration might look like:

February 20

After several days of travel we have reached the Dungeon, losing only one camel and three graduate students in the trek. One student was eaten by an owlbear, one was spirited away by pixies, and a third decided to get a job as a barista. We are hopeful that soon the priceless treasures of Appreh the Endless will soon be ours to mark carefully with index cards and put in storage.

This is just beautiful, makes me feel maybe this crazy bunch of monkeys might just work it all out after all. Yves Rossy, a Swiss pilot, flew across the English Channel on his homemade, jet-propelled, personal "wing" aircraft. The thing looks like a real-life "Buzz Lightyear" jetpack.

This week's missions: first, write one-half of a telephone conversation

Yeah, hi. It's me.

Got your message. What's up?

Yeah, sure.

Uh huh. Uh huh.

That's cool.

That's your mom's husband, right?

Uh huh.

Ha-ha!

Oh, not much. Finished painting that bedroom a few days ago, so that's good. Oh, and I bought a new vacuum cleaner today. On sale at Target.

Yeah. Well, needed one that would get up the dog hair. It's a Bissel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm trying to write something.

Yeah, usual Sunday night thing.

Uh huh.

I didn't watch much of the Olympics, partly because the events I want to see never get covered, partly because I'm still uneasy about the whole Beijing hosting thing. But two bits worth noting:

• During the opening ceremonies, the Microsoft Windows "Blue Screen of Death" made an appearance. Ha, ha. "Perhaps this is simply Microsoft's idea of 'product placement', as the BSOD is one of the more recognizable features of Windows, and perhaps transcends all language barriers," quips macenstein.com.

I saw the luckiest deer in the state of Maryland today, on the way home from FSG. Saw him run from the median strip across four lanes of traffic into the woods and was unscathed. (And I suppose he must have run across he other four lanes to get into the median in the first place.)

So at Playa Del Fuego this weekend, I saw some cool firespinning and nifty burning art. But the thing that made me stand stunned and awed was a short video that was playing at one camp as I happened by, as they were getting ready for a movie. Amazing juggling - I feel like "juggling" isn't even the right word, I've never seen anything like this.
A little Google-fu turned up the video:

(Speaking of PDF, my new fire poi arrived here at the house while I was there, so I didn't have the chance to spin fire this time. But I will soon!)